Welcome back to the Life With Nick Podcast. In this podcast, Ashton and I discuss the Journey of Fitness and how the journey and our motivation for fitness, evolves over time. We begin the podcast with Ashton sharing his early vision for wanting to get into fitness. This created a desire for him to begin his journey, specifically within the world of calisthenics, where he began to really understand fitness at a foundational level. (Calisthenics is foundational bodyweight movements... aka Push up, Squat, Pull up, CORE work, etc.) Simple baseline calisthenics led Ashton to develop quick muscle growth and feel stronger which fueled his fire for continued growth and effort. Ashton, like all of us, battled insecurities early on in his journey. Insecurities can break us or provide us the best level of motivation for change. Facing them every day and every workout is the battle we all have to face, if we are brave enough to choose. Additionally, the evidence of his efforts was like placing bricks of confidence after every workout. As the evidence grows, so does the mind strengthen, so does motivation increase. The journey continues, Ashton then speaks on finding the weightroom in his high school years. This was a major turning point for him both in terms of resources available to him and also being introduced to a new kind of training. That training is known as strength training. The more effort he put into the sessions, the more strength and muscle growth he experienced, and this is the power of consistency. I would also argue that, if Ashton would have started in the weightroom first, his progress would have been modified as a baseline of bodyweight mastery leads to ease of gains when using free weights and barbell exercises because of the body control and the foundation built. One specific resource Ashton learned that aided in his journey is tracking. As the old saying goes, what gets tracked, gets improved upon. As strength training became more comfortable and desirable, through tracking, Ashton developed a goal. A major milestone for Ashton was being able to bench 225. Any gym bro knows that hitting 225 opens the door for you mentally which catapulted Ashton into his next journey which was powerlifting. You can feel, in the podcast, Ashton's mentality builds as he evolves into different stages of his fitness journey, and this is normal for someone with a drive and desire to experience all types of training and trust the process of learning how to train. With every good story, there are moments when someone faces adversity. Some adversity is a lot, other moments are small steps. Ashton's, thankfully, was a small bit of adversity, but it led to a powerful lesson which revolves around ego lifting. Ashton's powerlifting led him to new heights, but it also led him to rush the process. Almost all young men go through this, at one point or another, in their training. I recall many times that I tried to lift a weight only because my friends could do it. Competition is healthy, but to avoid long term injuries, ego lifting can be a killer. All in all, Ashton's message on this is simply trust the process which is golden advice. In the last stage of the journey, in terms of the podcast, Ashton found CrossFit but specifically running. Running was a burden on him, and he did not know his limits. One day, he asked himself the question of "If I went for a run right now, how far can I go?" As a compliment to him, the answer was about 6 miles which is much further than most trying to answer that question, yet it left him both curious and motivated. Ashton's most recent challenge was running a half marathon. I will leave this story in the podcast, but one thing in particular that stood out to me is that, when we are in the journey, making progress, we lose sight of how far we can make it. When we commit to the process and fall in love with the daily/ weekly/ and monthly goals, we create tunnel vision which is what we need, yet we must place reminders to ourselves, to slow down and take a look at the horizon and appreciate our growth. As we evolve in our fitness journey, so does our mental battles and insecurities, yet as Ashton shares, a mountain can be summitted, provided enough time. This work to summit our mountain enables the feeling of success and this was the mountain Ashton decided to climb. It was not pretty, but he was consistent and as we know, that is the formula for any type of progress in this world. Other topics discussed in the podcast were:

• Summitting your Mountain.

• Falling in love with the process.

• Reinventing yourself after you hit a goal/success.

• Evolving your identity while creating new challenges.

Enjoy the podcast!